Who's Healthy: America's Health Rankings 2008 Issued by United Health Foundation

United Health Foundation has just released its 2008 America's Health Rankings. The report considers a number of components the UHF considers important to public health, analyzes their availability compared to a national mean on a state-by-state basis, and then ranks each state according to its overall score.

The overall result is shown in the following chart, listing the states from healthiest to least healthy according to the study's metrics:


I won't get into the minutia of everything that went into these calculations. If you're interested in them, all the information you could possibly need is available via the UHF.

It's also interesting to check out the Nation at a Glance clickable map. There, you can click a state to get a brief list of strengths and challenges as well as a snapshot that gives considerably more detail of trends in the state.

A few particulars leap right out, though. With the exception of Nevada (#42), the bottom 10 states in terms of overall health are all southern states. Five of the top ten (Vermont #1, New Hampshire #3, Massachusetts #6, Connecticut #7 and Maine #9) are in New England. In fact, the only New England state not in the top 10 is Rhode Island, which comes in at #11. No southern state made the top 10; the highest ranked among those is Virginia at #20. In fact, it's the only state in the southeast that comes in above the national average, to which Arizona comes closest.

According to the report, Massachusett's biggest overall public health challenge is binge drinking. Louisiana, at the bottom of the list, has low binge drinking as one of its strengths. This reveals a personal bias of mine; because of Mardi Gras, I always connect Louisiana with drinking, so it's a surprise to learn that its more of a problem here than there.

I also can't help thinking back to the Pew Religious Landscape Survey (I blogged about it here). It's interesting to note that the most religious states are also the ones that come in at the bottom of the UHF's health ranking and the least religious come out near the top. Mississippi, for instance, was the most religious state of all according to Pew's metrics and according to UHF ranks #49 out of 50 in terms of public health (it ranked dead last in 2007, but Louisiana has now surpassed it). This is correlation and doesn't demonstrate that poor public health increases religious sentiments, nor vice versa, but the correlation is unmistakable overall (Utah in particular bucks the trend, however). I suspect that there may well be a factor common to both religious fervor (e.g. fundamentalist tendencies) and poor health when it comes to the bigger public health picture. Perhaps poverty, for instance, and/or lack of access to good education might be a contributing factor in the correlated results of both studies.

In any case, the Health Rankings report is interesting to poke about in. Enjoy.

Sphere: Related Content

After the Election: Symptoms of an American Pathology

With all of the joyful noise following the last Presidential election,it's sad to have to be reminded that there's still an old sickness in our cultural body that is yet to be cured. Still, it doesn't come as a surprise. Months before the election, the purveyors of hatred were already making their voices heard. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the threats have kept on coming and have gone beyond words to action in some cases. Now that America will have its first president whose skin isn't pinky-beige, whose hair looks a bit different than the Caucasian type, whose father was an African, the venom is ratcheting up.

There have been "hundreds" of incidents since the election, many more than usual, said Mark Potok, director of the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors hate crimes.

Some of the incidents tracked include:

• ...Snellville, Ga., where Denene Millner said a boy on the school bus told her 9-year-old daughter the day after the election: "I hope Obama gets assassinated." That night, someone trashed her sister-in-law's front lawn, mangled the Obama lawn signs, and left two pizza boxes filled with human feces outside the front door...
  
• Four North Carolina State University students admitted writing anti-Obama comments in a tunnel designated for free speech expression, including one that said: "Let's shoot that nigger in the head..."
  
• At Standish, Maine, a sign inside the Oak Hill General Store read: "Osama Obama Shotgun Pool." Customers could sign up to bet $1 on a date when Obama would be killed. "Stabbing, shooting, roadside bombs, they all count," the sign said. At the bottom of the marker board was written "Let's hope someone wins."
  
• Racist graffiti was found in places including New York's Long Island, where two dozen cars were spray-painted
  
• Kilgore, Texas, where the local high school and skate park were defaced; and the Los Angeles area, where swastikas, racial slurs and "Go Back To Africa" were spray painted on sidewalks, houses and cars.
  
• Second- and third-grade students on a school bus in Rexburg, Idaho, chanted "assassinate Obama," a district official said.
  
• University of Alabama professor Marsha L. Houston said a poster of the Obama family was ripped off her office door. A replacement poster was defaced with a death threat and a racial slur...
  
• Black figures were hanged by nooses from trees on Mount Desert Island, Maine, the Bangor Daily News reported...
  
• Crosses were burned in yards of Obama supporters in Hardwick, N.J., and Apolacan Township, Pa.
  
• A black teenager in New York City said he was attacked with a bat on election night by four white men who shouted 'Obama.'
  
• In Forest Hills, PA, a black man said he found a note with a racial slur on his car windshield, saying "now that you voted for Obama, just watch out for your house."

— Source

From sea to shining sea, indeed.

It would be naive to even ask why this is happening. We all know why. The pathology has been around long enough. One might as well ask what causes the common cold or why the sky is blue. There are people in this country who, having accomplished nothing with their own lives, identify their own value — and by extension the value of other human beings — by some easily distinguishable physical trait, some bit of superficial biological coincidence. It's all they've got, and they'll cling to it for all they're worth because it is all they're worth. Call that bit of inconsequential physicality into question and you call their value as a human being into question. You make an enemy who may well take it upon himself to extract vengeance.

That someone who looks different, who doesn't share some valued hue of the flesh with such people, has achieved the nation's highest political office drives such people into a rage. Some meaningful privilege that they'd hoped and believed was connected with their appearance has turned out not to be so connected. It is for this reason that I expect at least one assassination attempt to be made upon Obama. It's a pathetic expectation, I know, but it would be just as naive not to think such an event will come as it is to question the motivation for it in the first place.

Sphere: Related Content

Mushroom Season Makes the News

The proliferation of fungal fruiting bodies in Massachusetts this summer is making the news here. While that in itself is a good thing, the press always has to come up with an interesting angle that makes a story one of human interest. In the case of mushrooms, that usually winds up as warnings about mushroom poisonings. In fact, it's often about children being poisoned, even when it hasn't actually happened.

Still, I'm glad when my favorite kingdom gets some press, and in this case that press includes a television interview by WBZ with my PhD advisor:


The story is a bit alarmist, of course, because that makes it interesting to people who normally don't care about mushrooms. The "won't somebody think of the children!" angle always sells. What the story also doesn't mention is that even most poisonous mushrooms aren't lethal mushrooms. They'll make you sick, but you won't die — although you might feel like you're going to. Of all the mushroom species found in North America, only a small fraction ever prove lethal, although I can certainly understand why the parent of some kid who eats a bit of an unidentified mushroom would be concerned. A good rule of thumb for reducing the risk if you happen to be a Massachusetts parent worried about your kid eating something nasty in your garden is to keep an eye out for any mushroom that has what looks like warts on its cap, a ring on its stem and a cup or collar at the base. Those are likely to be members of genus Amanita, and thus the most likely to be lethally poisonous. Go through the yard and remove them. They're generally among the more conspicuous fungi you'll see. You can remove every mushroom you see, but you're likely to spend a lot of time at it. Of course, you can also just keep a close watch on the kids, but it only takes a second of one's back being turned for a toddler to pop a bad fungus into his or her mouth. If you would like to see some of the various forms that Amanita can take, click here. Judging from what I've seen around town, the most common species right now is Amanita brunnescens, which has a cap colored various shades of brown and white to very light brown warts. It can get quite large and, while toxic, probably isn't going to cause death.

The Boston Globe is also running a story today on the prolific mushroom fruitings being seen in the area. It talks a bit more about amateur mycologists and not quite so much about the poisonings that haven't happened:

Everything's coming up mushrooms
Summer of rain has silver lining - a rare bonanza of fungi
By Tom Haines

No one loves the rewards of a rainy summer quite like a mycologist does.

"It's just, I'm telling you, cloud nine," said Elinoar Shavit of Concord.

Even on short walks, Shavit has easily spotted Boletus edulis (porcini), Craterellus fallax (black trumpet), Laetiporus sulphureus (chicken mushroom), and "chanterelles galore!"

After July brought twice the average rainfall to the region, prompting mycelium to fruit in abundance, mushroom maniacs - whether serious scientists or curious cooks - are reveling in a bounty seldom seen...

There are thousands of species of mushrooms that burst forth when conditions are right with bulbs and caps in craggy shelves and huddled clusters, and more. The mushrooms survive for a few hours or weeks, depending on species; some prefer spring, others summer or fall...

Shapes, colors, and composition also fascinate scientists and others who want to know exactly how things work. Experimenters of another sort favor certain mushrooms, which grow in New England only very occasionally but can cause hallucinations.

This year, though, even the usually disinterested among us are captivated by more kinds of mushrooms, in larger quantity - whether clumps of black trumpets or giant puffballs - popping up in the yard more or less overnight...

Local hospitals have seen a spike in calls, mostly from parents of toddlers who had popped mushrooms in their mouths. Most tastings have turned out to be harmless, and there have been no fatalities this year, according to Alfred Aleguas, clinical manager with the Regional Center for Poison Control and Prevention Serving Massachusetts and Rhode Island...

One close call came before a neighbor contacted Shavit, a contributing editor to Fungi magazine known for her ability to identify different species. The neighbor told Shavit she had picked 30 pounds of chanterelles, an elegant, edible specimen that is tasty when sauteed in oil with shallots and salt. On closer inspection, Shavit determined the suspected chanterelles were Omphalotus illudens, or Jack O' Lantern mushrooms, known to spur vomiting and diarrhea.

Norman "Dugie" Russell, who helps Children's Hospital Boston and Beverly Hospital with emergency mushroom identifications, warns casual pickers to study guidebooks and seek expert advice...

Again, the moral of the story here is pretty simple, aside from the fact that we mycologists and enthusiasts are having a wonderful year. If you don't know the difference between an Omphalotus and a Cantharellus on site, don't eat any mushrooms without having them identified by someone who has a grasp of diversity, because, frankly, it's very easy to tell those two genera apart. Omphalotus always grows on wood and has blade-like gills; Cantharellus grows on the ground and has vein-like "gills." If you think you've found some chanterelles (Cantharellus) and want to know for certain, please let me know. I'll be happy to take a look and tell you whether you've got the right mushrooms... for a small cut of your find, of course, if they do turn out to be chanterelles. I love the things. In fact, LL and I had some Craterellus cornucopioides for dinner just last night. They're my favorite.

It truly is an amazing year for mushrooms, whether they're edible or just beautiful. If you live in New England and have been curious to learn about fungi, this is the time to do it. Contact your local mycological society and get out on a few forays. A better year for sheer numbers and diversity is unlikely to come your way for another decade or two. You can find contact information for amateur mycological societies throughout the United States courtesy of the North American Mycological Association. Here are the ones in New England:

• Connecticut:
  Berkshire Mycological Society
  c/o Jim Berlstein
  PO Box 247
  Norfolk, CT 06058-0247
  web: www.bms.iwarp.com
  email: berkshiremycology [at] lycos.com
  
  Connecticut Valley Mycological Society
  129 Stockburger Rd
  Moodus, CT 06469-1042
  email: janblanchard [at] comcast.net
  
  
• Maine:
  Maine Mycological Society
  216 Huff's Mill Rd.
  Bowdoin, ME 04287-7138
  web: www.mushroomthejournal.com/mma/index.html
  email: mjpmm955i [at] gwi.net
  
  
• Massachusetts:
  Boston Mycological Club
  20 Shirley St
  Ayer, MA 01432-1208
  web: www.bostonmycologicalclub.org
  email: georgeriner [at] mycogeo.com
  
  
• New Hampshire:
  Monadnock Mushroomers Unlimited
  PO Box 1796
  Keene, NH 03431-1796
  email: beewing [at] cheshire.net
  
  
• Northeastern US:
  Northeast Mycological Federation
  web: www.nemf.org
  email: ursula.hoffmann [at] lehman.cuny.edu

Sphere: Related Content

Maine Creationists Continue Gibbering

Even though it has been nearly a month since School Administrative District 59 in Maine rejected the nonsense put forth by Young Earth Creationist Matthew Linkletter, his gibbering co-Creationists continue their, well, gibbering. A letter from one of them appears in todays Morning Sentinel and even in terms of the usual blithering ignorance of science that we're all used to hearing from these people it's still pretty awful.

When law meets theory, theory must give way

I've met Matthew Linkletter a couple of times and I believe he has a keen intellect.

I think you people at the Sentinel editorial board know perfectly well that Linkletter's comments about evolution are factually correct. All you've ever advanced as evidence for evolution is the say-so of scientists who cannot stomach the idea of being held accountable for their actions by God.

Not too long ago, the same crowd was insisting that the world was flat.

No one on either side of the debate denies that natural selection is taking place. Natural selection is simply the interaction of all life and the environment on one another, causing a certain amount of adaptation by life forms to better survive. Natural selection does not explain where life, or the environment, came from, nor does evolution.

Mathematics does not support evolution. The odds of lighting striking a mud puddle and creating life have been calculated and found to be a mathematical impossibility.

Genetics does not support evolution. The human gene code is increasingly in decay. This decay is called genetic load. It's like sticks on a camel's back. When the genetic load reaches a certain point, mankind will become extinct.

The diligent can easily search out the truth. To Norman Dean, I would simply say Law of Entropy. When a law meets a mere theory, the theory must give way. Entropy is why people die, and it does the same to the theory of evolution.

Bruce Clavette
Athens

It's entirely possible that Matthew Linkletter has a keen intellect — when compared to Bruce Clavette. It's hard to imagine that he could be much duller at the very least.

The say-so of scientists is called — wait for it now — science. That's what gets taught in science classes. That "say-so" is backed up by facts, by research, by mathematical modeling. We're not just making this stuff up, but Clavette is right insofar as all he knows about it is the "say-so of scientists." If he did research himself, then he could be part of that "say-so" because he, too, would be a scientist. History, to that extent, is the "say-so" of historians. Mathematics is the "say-so" of mathematicians. See how this works? If the "say-so" of lumberjacks was taught in science class, that wouldn't qualify as teaching science. Ditto for the "say-so" of Creationists. Clavette, by the way, runs a municipal waste dump for a living. Garbage in, garbage out.

Natural selection doesn't cause adaptation, it selects upon adaptations that already exist and so increases or decreases the frequency of certain traits in particular populations. In order to generate new adaptations, mutation is necessary. Evolutionary biology includes both of these, and together (along with a number of other mechanisms of which I doubt Clavette is aware) they do an excellent job of explaining where life as we see it today came from and so the origin of the biotic part of modern environments.

Evolution isn't predicated on lightning striking mud puddles, and where Clavette comes up with this stuff is unknown to me. Mathematics supports evolution very well; evolutionary biologists use it all the time. One thing is for certain — there is nothing in any math of which I'm aware that prevents lightning striking puddles. The probability of lightning striking a particular puddle is vanishingly small, but the nature of statistics is such that if you have enough time, puddles and enough thunder storms the odds that one of those puddles will be hit by lightning eventually approaches certainty. Clavette apparently doesn't understand statistics any better than he understands biology.

Genetics supports evolutionary theory in every single case it's been looked at. Clavette, however, chooses to serve up what is perhaps the most muddle-headed point in his whole obtuse letter here. The concept of genetic load was first put forth by biologist JBS Haldane, the same man who, when asked about what biology has to say about God wryly and famously replied that it demonstrates that "He has an inordinate fondness for beetles." The concept of genetic load — itself a facet of evolutionary theory — doesn't tell us that mankind is going to become extinct due to the decay of our genome. It merely states that the loss of alleles in a population comes with some cost. It cannot be looked at in isolation, because new alleles are also generated sometimes and some alleles are never lost but go to fixation, meaning that all members of a population can carry the same allele and so the allele will continue to exist for so long as some other factor doesn't wipe out the population. Deleterious alleles are usually lost with greater frequency than beneficial ones due to natural selection. The potential does exist for a population to accumulate one or more alleles so deleterious that it will become extinct, but this is unusual. Clavette is acting a lot more like a prophet than a scientist when he asserts that mankind's genome is falling apart and that we'll eventually become extinct due to this "decay." I'm not aware of any scientific evidence for it, so unless Clavette has been doing some research into the history of the human genome on his own — in which case he ought to publish his findings — he's just making up stories here. This is why the "say-so" of scientists is taught in science classrooms, by the way. Students would be poorly served, indeed, if schools were to instead teach the "say-so" of people like Clavette.

Finally, Clavette brings up the hoary Creationist canard of the law of entropy, that bastardized version of the second law of thermodynamics. Need it be pointed out yet again that entropy increases irreversibly only in systems that are isolated from the input of energy from their environment — and biological systems don't qualify as isolated systems as evidence by the fact that Bruce Clavette, like every other living thing on the planet, regularly takes in energy in the form of nutrition? In other words, if it has a metabolism, it isn't an isolated system and isn't subject solely to the second law of thermodynamics. As long as energy is input into a system, entropy is overcome by that energy. It isn't just entropy that causes death; what causes death is the accumulation of small defects that aren't repaired because of the inherent imperfection of biological systems in the utilization of energy for creating chemical bonds, for example. Ultimately, we wear down like any machine. If it were simply unbridled entropy, as Clavette seems to think, we'd never live in the first place.

Clavette has a problem with scientists whose "say-so" doesn't include supernatural intervention. Instead, he wants to substitute the "say-so" of people who don't have the first inkling about scientific knowledge, a condition that Clavette demonstrates exists in himself in this letter. He then wants to call that "science" and teach it to students in his home state. If this were to be done, there would be no point to education. Why bother teaching students to be ignorant when ignorance is precisely the absence of education? Why not just have them memorize scriptural passages while squatting in a field somewhere and leave it at that?

I suspect that this would be just fine with Clavette. In fact if his letter is any indication of his educational history, there's a good chance that this sums up his early years quite well.

Sphere: Related Content

Maine Creationism Effort Squashed for This Year

It looks like Matthew Linkletter and Norman Luce of School Administrative District 59 in Maine have been slapped down for the time being:

No vote Monday on evolution topic

MADISON — School Administrative District 59 directors will not vote on or even address revising the school curriculum on Monday, Superintendent Michael Gallagher said today.

During their April 29 meeting, the SAD 59 Board of Directors tabled discussions about revising the curriculum and about how the district teaches the theory of evolution.

Board member Matthew Linkletter of Athens last month suggested removing evolution from the science curriculum. Linkletter said that evolution is not proven, and thus should not be taught as science.

Gallagher said that the board has no specific timetable regarding discussion and an ultimate vote on a revising the curriculum. Such a vote might not happen during the current school year, he said...

The matter was to be put to a vote at the upcoming May 19 meeting of the Board of Directors, but it has apparently had the legs kicked out from under it. No reason for this is given in the article.

While this is good news, Linkletter and Luce are still on the Board of Directors and might well continue agitations. I plan to keep an eye out for them. Unless they're removed from their respective offices, I have a hunch we haven't heard the last of these people.

Sphere: Related Content

Is a New Creationist Strategy Being Road-Tested in Maine?

A commenter on Pharyngula hit one of my concerns about the SAD 59 Creationist situation right on the button:

I thought this looked like a new tactic on the part of creationists:

We can't even get ID through the small wedge we created into science classes, so lets pull evolution out.

— Spanish Inquisitor

This is something that concerns me as well. The Neocreationists/IDolators have, until now, always used strategies that attempted to get something they wanted into science curricula. The latest of these, which we saw in Florida among others, was the idea that "academic freedom" requires that all "alternative theories" be given equal footing, so Intelligent Design should be taught alongside evolutionary biology — even if only because some particular teacher wanted to do so.

That strategy presents a real problem, though, because at least one judge in recent memory had ruled that Intelligent Design wasn't science and still represented a religious idea. While that ruling technically was binding only upon a single jurisdiction, the decision in Kitzmiller v. Dover was still likely to be seen as a precedent for future rulings.

Matthew Linkletter is without doubt an unabashed classical Creationist and believes in a literal six-day creation, young earth, the whole medieval enchilada. Why, we should be asking, is he saying that he doesn't want Creationism taught in Maine's public schools?

Linkletter and his cohorts in Maine aren't asking that anything be inserted into a curriculum. They're trying to get something removed. Unlike previous strategies, this one wouldn't violate any religious bias or church-state separation law, at least not on the face of it. Not teaching about evolution and not teaching some version of Creationism doesn't endorse a particular religion because you can't endorse something by not saying anything about it. If they're successful in this effort, however, they still achieve what has been their goal all along, which is to get evolutionary biology out of K-12 classrooms.

If evolutionary biology isn't taught in school, it almost certainly won't be taught anywhere. It doesn't matter whether or not Creationism is taught in a classroom because it will still be taught in churches, Sunday schools and homes. Remember, the point of this assault on biology has never been about making a positive rebuttal to accepted science. All that Neocreationists have ever done is to attempt to poke (illegitimate) holes in evolutionary theory. They don't care about replacing it with something better, only about getting rid of it entirely.

That's one major reason why I've been rather alarmed at the situation in Maine. As far as I know, this modus operandi hasn't been used before and it may prove to be a highly pernicious one.

Sphere: Related Content

Maine Creationist Matthew Linkletter Story Getting Out

Thanks again to everyone who helped out in projecting into the blogosphere the sad story of Maine SAD 59 Director Matthew Linkletter's effort to expel evolutionary biology from the science curriculum there. The item finally seems to have grown legs and is now propagating across both big blogs and newspapers. It's now made Daily Kos as well as the Boston Herald, Boston Globe, Cape Cod Times, Nashua Telegraph, and a number of other outlets. This story first broke on May 6 and was being roundly ignored until bloggers started running with it yesterday. Publicizing it in this way, getting the news of something happening in a small school district in Maine to rise to some level of consciousness nationally and internationally, is an example of what blogging should do when it works for the common good.

I wrote yesterday to the National Center for Science Education, the Southern Maine chapter of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and the Freedom from Religion Foundation. I hope that others have done the same. If I should get a response from any or all of these organizations, I'll share it here.

I hope, too, that Matthew Linkletter, Norman Luce, Roy Blivens and also the people involved with SAD 59 who are pushing back against this nonsense — like Jessica Ward and Norman Dean — are aware now that the world is watching. School Administration District 59 doesn't exist in a vacuum; the products of its education are all Americans. Whether the effort to dilute and destroy science education comes from a Hollywood has-been, a legislature in Florida or a few fundamentalists in Maine, we all have a stake in the outcome.

As a casual observer of what makes this country work and what stops it cold, I hereby offer a few suggestions on how we can ruin American competitiveness and innovation in the course of this century. I think the reader will agree with me that we are already far down the road on many of them...

12) Elevate mysticism, tribalism, shamanism and fundamentalism--and be sure to exclude educated, hardworking men and women--to an equal status with technology in the public mind. Make sure that, in order to pay proper (and politically correct) respect to all different ethnic groups in America, you act as if science were on an equal footing with voodoo and history with ethnic fable...

— How to Ruin American Enterprise, by Ben Stein
Forbes Magazine, 12/23/02

Sphere: Related Content

Little Revelations from Maine and a Thank You to Bloggers Big and Small

Actually, the note of appreciation comes first to the many bloggers who have picked up the story of the Creationist escapade in Maine and so are helping it to get exposure outside of that single state:

• The Austringer — Maine: School Board Director Seeks to Exclude Evolution
  
• Dispelled: No Unintelligence Allowed — Can't "Teach The Controversy"? "Don't Teach at All!"
  
• Further Thoughts — Maine school board: teach creationism or drop evolution
  
• Science After Sunclipse — Antiscience in Maine
  
• The Teapot Atheist — Matthew Linkletter is anti-science

Thanks, too, to people who've left comments on other blogs alerting them to this so-far little exposed situation, such as The Chaplain of An Apostate's Chapel.

One of the interesting things to me when these debates flare up in online fora is to take note of how people view things. For instance, fundamentalists often appear to view evolutionary biology as a religion because, I think, they tend to see the whole world as divided into two camps: their own religion and the opposition. Anything that opposes their own religion becomes another religion in their minds as a product of their own fundamentalist mindset.

Equally revealing is the conflation of Intelligent Design and Creationism. Personally, I don't see much of a difference. Intelligent Design mainly seeks to find specific points at which to inject a creator; that's why I tend to refer to it as Neocreationism. Classical Creationism, in keeping generally with scriptural literalism, always asserts that the creator came in the beginning. It's just a matter of where one puts the gaps. Neocreationists see gaps here and there; Classical Creationists essentially see one huge gap at the very beginning of everything. That's not a terribly important distinction, though. Many ID proponents place emphasis on the big gap at the beginning, too. This is fostered by the Neocreationist leadership itself by conflating abiogenesis, or even cosmology, with evolutionary biology. I've yet to see any of the big ID guys from the Discovery Institute take Classical Creationists to task and, indeed, if Ben Stein's drek had anything new to reveal, it was that the Neocreationist crowd is more than happy to include explicit religious ideology in its tactics.

The upshot of this produces some either very confused or very intuitive (in a skewed way) individuals, one of whom has been quite active in the fora associated with newspaper reporting of the Matthew Linkletter/Norman Luce exploit. He goes by the user ID C-Fairer and is from Waterville, Maine according to his profile. Waterville is about 30 miles from Athens and about 20 miles from Madison, the "ground zero" in this latest Creationist flare-up. I wouldn't be surprised at all to learn that C-Fairer has or will attend the SAD 59 Board of Directors meetings.

He or she (I think he's male, but that could be my own bias) wrote something today that I felt should be shared:

C-Fairer of Waterville, ME
May 11, 2008 1:19 PM
The 1st Amendment is this:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

The founding fathers didn't want a Congress to establish a national religion like the "Church of England". Mentioning "Intelligent Design" along with Evolution does not "establish a national religion". Muslims, Jews, Buddhist, Christians and atheist exist together in this country cause all beliefs are tolerated.

Banning any discussion of "Intelligent Design" definitely is prohibiting the free exercise of religion (a violation of the 1st Amendment). Congress did pass laws restricting its practice in todays schools.

Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech. Therefore, banning any discussion of "Intelligent Design" is in violation of this Amendment. Schools are being censored.

"Separation of Church & State", however you choose to define it's meaning, is not in the Constitution. The 1st Amendment is.

This says a lot about how this individual thinks, of course. First, he's bringing up Intelligent Design. Note that nobody on the SAD 59 Board of Directors has explicitly used those words to describe what they want taught or not in science courses. Linkletter, for instance, has used the word Creationism in every instance. C-Fairer, however, is obviously perceptive enough to realize that there's no meaningful difference between the two "alternative theories." Therefore, what it's called is of no concern. It's not the "religion" of evolutionary biology.

Secondly, C-Fairer certainly does see this as a religious issue and not a scientific one. He's invoking a Constitutional amendment that was written to protect religion (in his interpretation of it), but not protect anyone from religion. Not allowing Intelligent Design, words he has substituted for Creationism, to be taught in science classes, is not a violation of rational thought, good science or sound education but a blow against Christianity. I don't know that he means Christianity with certainty, of course, but somehow I doubt that the Creationism he'd want students to learn about would be based on the story that Vishnu in the form of a boar (Varaha) raised the earth out of the waters of primordial chaos. Call it a hunch.

I'll make another bet here. I'll bet that the Discovery Institute Illuminati won't chastise C-Fairer or people like him as they go about pulling the strings behind the scenes as they've done in several states now. For all of their protestations that ID isn't based on religion, they don't do anything to discourage the idea held by many of its adherents that it's religious in nature. In fact, I'm sure they'd be absolutely happy with getting Classical Creationism inserted into science classes instead of Neocreationism if they thought it could be gotten away with.

If I'm wrong about that, I'd love to see Casey Luskin or William Dembski or any of the other odd fellows of the DI make a public statement on Evolution News and Views that they don't want Creationists in their movement and rebuke those who conflate ID with religiously-inspired stories of how the leopard got its spots.

I wouldn't advise anyone holding their breath on that score, though.

Sphere: Related Content

Maine Creationists: Teach Neither or Teach Both

Matthew Linkletter and some of his Creationist friends in Maine's School Administrative District 59 spoke out again in their effort to have evolutionary biology removed from the school curriculum in their district at the May 19 meeting of the Board of Directors. This time around, they "chose at random" a couple of parents of students at Madison Area Memorial High School to speak whom, it turned out, voiced support for their position. The parents — one an education technician at another local school, the other the treasurer of the sports boosters — both spoke in favor of teaching Creationism in biology classes.

The following account is from the Kennebec Journal:

SAD 59 debates teaching of evolution

The state Department of Education disagrees with an Athens School Board director who wants School Administrative District 59 to drop evolution from its high school science curricula.

Director Matthew Linkletter claims evolution is an unprovable theory and shouldn't be taught as fact. He's urged the SAD 59 Board of Directors to consider his view during its May 19 meeting in Madison, with a goal of removing evolution from science classrooms.

But David Connerty-Marin of the Department of Education says evolution must be taught because, in the state's view, it's a proven science.

"For our students to be prepared for college work and life in the 21st century, it's necessary," said Connerty-Marin.

Connerty-Marin said the Maine Learning Results program mandates the study of evolution in public science classes.

"Evolution is not just a belief, or based on faith, it's based on scientific evaluation," he said. "The worldwide science community supports it."

Linkletter believes that neither evolution nor creationism belong in a high school science curriculum, because they cannot be proven.

"You can't show, observe or prove (evolution)," he said.

School Administrative District 59 includes the towns of Madison, Athens, Brighton Plantation and Starks.

Chosen at random, two parents of Madison Area Memorial High School students expressed some support for Linkletter's position.

"I think that's a very valid point, to tell you the truth, because evolution is only a theory, not a hard fact," said Nancy Martin, an educational technician at Athens Elementary School.

Martin, who has a son at the high school, said that she believes in creationism, as outlined in the Old Testament Book of Genesis. She said SAD 59 should pull evolution from the science curriculum unless creationism is afforded equal footing.

Laney Kirk of Madison, treasurer of the sports boosters who has a daughter at Madison High, agreed with Martin -- to a point.

"Really and truly, they're both ideas," Kirk said. "We can teach both. But that's where we run into a problem, when you say they're mutually exclusive. You're never going to get everyone to agree about it, so why not teach them both?"

Kirk said she attends most SAD 59 meetings, but missed the one last week when Linkletter broached the topic. The board voted to table the issue and revisit it on May 19. Kirk does not believe that the board should remove evolution from the curriculum.

"There are people who believe that the Holocaust is a theory," Kirk said. "It's like banning a book."

Town Manager Norman Dean, who taught science in Madison from 1962 through 1996, had stronger words for the proposal.

"That's absolutely stupid," said Dean, who once taught Linkletter. "I thought we already had the monkey trial."

There is plenty of evidence, Dean said, that Charles Darwin's theory of evolution is correct.

"Adaption over time is proven time and again," he said. "I believe evolution is adaptation to the environment."

Roy Blevins is pastor of Linkletter's church, the Church of the Open Bible in Athens. Blevins spoke in favor of SAD 59 Chairman Norman Luce's suggestion, that a philosophy class might provide a better forum for the study of evolution.

"That's a sane approach," Blevins said. "The evolution concept is a theory, and not provable. If the science department at Madison High is simply teaching theory, then you ought to leave it in the science department."

Blevins agreed with Linkletter that neither is creationism provable, and thus does not belong in the curriculum.

This seems to be flying under the radar of the usual people and organizations who get involved with this game of Creationist whack-a-mole that's going on lately. I've seen nothing about this on the National Center for Science Education website (in fact, their news archive doesn't even have an option to choose Maine as a "place of interest" as of my writing this). There's been no mention of events in SAD59 on Pharyngula or Dispatches from the Culture Wars, and the only mention of it on The Panda's Thumb is a comment I left there a few days ago. Nobody seems to be picking this up for some reason, even though I would think it would be easier to work to nip this in the bud while this latest anti-science effort is in the embryonic stage at the county level in Maine before it reaches the state level like it has in Florida, Alabama, Missouri and Louisiana. I'm going to drop a note to the NCSE and try to alert PZ Myers and Ed Brayton again when I'm done writing this, but I have no illusions about my influence as a D-list blogger, so I would ask readers to help get the word out about this. This shouldn't be taking place in the shadows, reported on by one small blog and one small newspaper.

When the argument in Florida was going on, one of the first rumblings was at the county level, when some members of the Polk County school board led the way in putting forth a resolution objecting to the state's new science education standards. That's not unlike what's happening right now in Maine. In the case of Polk County, the Creationists backed down when people got involved and let them know that they were under the microscope. In Florida, there's a hugely influential, well-funded, centralized fundamentalist church and a whole lot of its adherents in state government. Maine isn't the same situation in that regard, but it should not be taken for granted that what has happened elsewhere couldn't happen in northern New England. Just as was done in Polk County, people need to let Matthew Linkletter and Roy Blevins and whoever else needs to know that the eyes of the rational world are upon them. The best time to treat cancer is when the tumor is just a few cells. Leave it untreated and it will spread. That principle needs to be applied to School Administrative District 59 in Maine, too. Some contact information, and links to more, are provided in this entry.

C'mon, rationalists, skeptics and scientists, don't leave people like Norman Dean and Jessica Ward without our deserved support. Please help spread the word about this!

Sphere: Related Content

Creationists in Maine: Matthew Linkletter Tries a "Don't Teach at All" Approach

Creationists are at it again, this time in Maine. In School Administrative District 59, Board of Directors member Matthew Linkletter is leading an effort to stop the teaching of evolutionary biology in district schools. He's doing so using typical Creationist canards; conflation of evolutionary theory with abiogenesis and a misdefinition of science. The Kennebec Morning Sentinel carries the story.

SAD 59 Science teaching debated Director: Evolution, creationism are unproven theories

MADISON -- Neither creationism nor evolution belongs in a high-school science curriculum, a School Administrative District 59 director believes.

Matthew Linkletter of Athens says that both are merely theories that represent "personal beliefs and world views," rather than proven science. Linkletter suggested during last week's SAD 59 board meeting that the board discuss evolution, the "Big Bang Theory" and other studies he believes should be deleted from the curriculum.

The school board tabled action on the science curriculum at the April 28 meeting, and will reconsider the issue when it meets at 7 p.m. May 19.

Linkletter, a Christian, said there is no way to prove either evolution or creationism.

"You can't show, observe or prove it," Linkletter said of the belief systems. "It's something you have to believe by faith. It doesn't meet the criteria of science.

"If it's not scientifically verifiable, then maybe we should leave it out of the science classes. When you make a statement that's not backed by facts and just represents a world view, then it has no place."

Linkletter said he wants the best science for SAD 59 students, who should "be armed with the truth." They should be able to explain the origins of life according to evolution if it is taught in the schools, he said.

"Nobody has the answer to the origins of life. It's a philosophical question."

We're used to seeing this stuff by now, but I'll repeat it again. Evolutionary theory doesn't address the origin of life, only the means by which diversity arose (and continues to arise) after life had begun. Moreover, Linkletter is absolutely wrong in his contention that evolutionary biology is a "personal worldview." That evolution occurred certainly can, and has been, shown by thousands of studies which Linkletter, the ignorance of which amongst his constituency Linkletter is counting on in his furious hand-waving. These studies demonstrate specific instances of evolution, and the scientists who carried them out would be very surprised to learn that their research "doesn't meet the criteria of science." This may be true in Linkletter's twisted imaginings of what constitutes science, but it isn't the case in the world of science.

I did a Google search to see what I could find out about Linkletter, but there's not much information about him. However, I did find his profile on Amazon. It's readily apparent that he reads nothing but Creationist books. His wishlist has been updated as recently as May 4, when he added Ken Ham's Darwin's Plantation: Evolution's Racist Roots, so you can guess what his next tack will be in the argument. The rest of his wishlist is almost as revealing. The only tags that appear in his profile are "creation" and "creationism." He's written two book reviews as well, one on an apologetics volume called I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist in which he writes the following:

This is by far the most logical book I have read for a while. The authors move step by step through a very convincing arguement, using each chapter to advance one thought at a time. This is not an exhaustive book on every subject of philosophy or appologetics but crams a lot of information into every chapter.
They start with broad concepts (is truth knowable, relative morality) and progress to specifics by the end of the book (is the new testament reliable, the resorection, who is Jesus)...

Rife with incorrect spelling and lousy grammar, the review leaves me wondering how someone this poorly educated winds up in a position to make decisions about the education of others. His other review is of a Creationist argument (see that, Matthew? No e in the middle of "argument") against the human fossil record, Martin Lubenow's Bones of Contention. It's equally revealing and equally illiterate.

If highschool general science class left alot of questions for you, this book will answer many of them. Excellent account of human fossil history, written for a layman like me. Plenty of definitions when reqired. Instead of just producing his own theories on the subject matter, he very effectively uses evolutionists' own arguements, findings, and quotes against them. For example: rather than argue over young earth creation vs billions of years in evolution, he accepts their dates to base effective arguements from...

Linkletter appears to be writing at about a sixth grade level here.

Going back to the article, at least one school teacher is standing up to Linkletter:

High-school science teacher Jessica Ward disagrees.

"The empirical proof of evolution is in the study of genetics and how genes relate between organisms," said Ward, who teaches advanced-placement senior biology, senior anatomy/physiology and 10th-grade biology. She said evolution is proven, as an empirical matter of science, through studies of the human genome.

"My personal, as well as the National Science Teachers position, is that you can't teach genetics or ecology without evolution.

"The basis for it is the theory of evolution."

Ward noted that the Maine Learning Results mandates instruction in the theory of evolution. Schools would not be accredited without it, she said...

Ms. Ward deserves the support of the scientific community. She's standing up for the hard part in this debate. Linkletter is appealing to emotion and ignorance, while Ward has to demonstrate something to people who may not be all that concerned with the details. She will probably have her work cut out for her; I doubt that this assault on science education in Maine is unconnected to Ben Stein's propaganda and I wouldn't be surprised to learn that Ward is ultimately up against the Discovery Institute's machinations.

The article continues with comments from Board Chairman Norman Luce:

SAD 59 Board Chairman Norman Luce said that a high-school science curriculum might not be the correct forum for the study of evolution.

A philosophy class might be a better fit, the Starks resident said.

"It's OK to have it somewhere, but it depends on how much time they're spending on it in the sciences curriculum," Luce said. "I don't care if everybody else in the country uses it. Science is about proving things. (Linkletter) has a good point."

Luce added that he is not necessarily opposed to the study of evolution, but is not sure how much time should be devoted to it.

Is this sounding at all familiar yet? If Luce thinks Linkletter has a good point, Luce isn't knowledgeable enough about evolution in particular or science in general to voice an opinion. While I can't find anything about Luce, I suspect that he's got his own Creationist ties.

This may be another tack that the Neocreationist generalissimos are trying. If "teach the controversy" doesn't work, don't teach anything at all. Simply turn biology into stamp collecting with no unifying principles; gutting science entirely is completely satisfactory because, as we've been told recently, "science leads to killing people."

The SAD59 Board of Directors website provides contact information for all of the district's directors, although that for Matthew Linkletter (whom it is reasonable to think is related to fellow chair Alan Linkletter) includes only a PO Box. Norman Luce's contact information is freely available on the site is as follows:

Norman Luce (Chairman)
P.O. Box 22, Anson, ME 04911
696-3006 Home
696-4200 Work

The districts meeting minutes page is only current to February 2008, so the minutes of the meeting reported in the Morning Sentinel are not available there.

This looks like the beginning of another Creationist incursion into a school district with an eye toward an eventual statewide campaign. I'm reminded of the "first shots fired" in Polk County, Florida last year. Florida, to date, has been one of the most poorly rated states in terms of science education. If the people whose children attend Madison Area Memorial High School want to give those kids the best opportunity possible to prepare for a career in science, or just to receive a thorough and modern education, they need to stand up to Linkletter and Luce and demand that their district doesn't descend into the folly embraced by Florida's Creationist school boards and Ronda Storms' Citrus Taliban when new science standards formulated with the input of real scientists around the world were introduced. They need to listen to what Jessica Ward is telling them; she's right.

Sphere: Related Content